Dublin Airport's owner has seen its profits soar by almost 50% to €61m (£47m), buoyed by ever-increasing passenger numbers.

The airport operator Daa, which runs both Dublin and Cork airports, said commercial revenue from its domestic and international businesses grew by almost a third and overall passenger numbers grew by 14%.

Dublin Airport has attracted growing numbers of passengers from Northern Ireland - though the company has not released figures for Northern Ireland passengers in 2015. But figures for 2014 showed there had been 864,000 passengers from NI - up 52% on the year before.

"Daa had a strong year in 2015 with record passenger numbers at Dublin Airport, Cork Airport returning to traffic growth in the fourth quarter of the year, and an excellent performance by our airport retail business ARI," said Daa chief executive Kevin Toland.

Meanwhile, passenger numbers at Cork Airport declined by 3% to 2.1 million last year. Dublin Airport set new passenger records in all major sectors of its business last year, it said.

It added an extra 3.3 million passengers, along with 23 new routes.

"Dublin Airport is a key driver for Irish trade and tourism and the benefits of this additional traffic would have been felt throughout the economy," Mr Toland said.

Passenger numbers were up 15% to almost 7.8 million in the four months to the end of April.

Last month, Dublin Airport revealed work was due to start on a long-awaited second runway in a move that could further boost passenger numbers from Northern Ireland.

The airport said the new €320m (£260m) project, which is scheduled to be completed in 2020, would enable it to bring in fresh routes to global destinations, such as Asia and Africa.

Speaking about the runway, Mr Toland said: "The new runway will be an essential enabler for the Irish economy for many decades to come as it will support up to 31,000 new jobs and €2.2bn (£1.7bn) worth of economic activity."

Belfast Telegraph

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